Hi Emma,

Now that sounds more like it! I bet it's a wonderful place to explore! I love places like that.

My retirement project is to survey and list all of the plants in the Mersey Valley, in South Manchester, where I live. I have a theory that the marginal places on the edges of cities are often richer, and more biodiverse, than most people give them credit for. I want to know what we've got, out of pure scientific curiosity. But I also hope to be able to protect my scruffy little 'Gardens of Eden' from rapacious developers (did you know that all local authorities now have a 'biodiversity duty'?). The usual developers' trick is to hire a 'tame' ecologist and send him/her out in the depths of winter and then he/she testifies that there's nothing worth saving ... but if I've lodged my data with the local Ecology Unit ... (?)

Anyway, there's a place by the motorway that the Highways Agency trashed the year before last. I was livid until this year all sorts of old agricultural weeds came up - which probably no-one has seen for generations! The Agency also destroyed a perfectly good stream - but, as part of their 'biodiversity duty' built a pond ... and last Friday I found something called Spiked Water Milfoil in the pond - and I've only got one other site for that (bliss!). I'm sure that they didn't introduce it - it probably came in on ducks' feet.

Don't tell Lizzie, but I have actually been out all day 'communing' with 'Mother Nature' - but I like to think that I've been listening to what she has to tell me - rather than bossily and self-righteosly trying to impose my will on her! I think that it's because I approach her with the appropriate level of humility and reverence that she tells me new things every day.